In the processing of high quality steel strip and especially stainless steel strip, it is common to subject a cold-rolled, annealed and pickled or bright annealed strip to leveling during the processing.
The strip processing line thus can include a dressing mill stand, i.e. a mill stand which subjects the strip to only a minimum of thickness reduction, followed by one or more zones in which tension or stretch leveling occurs. For example, between the dressing mill stand and a pair of rolls looped by the workpiece steel strip, e.g. a bridle, a stretching zone is formed in which the strip tension is raised from the level of the strip tension as the strip is drawn through the dressing mill stand to a level at which the stretch leveling occurs.
This has been found to be successful in practice. However, basic to the use of bridles and rolls to increase the strip tension or to bring the strip tension from one level to another, is the problem of damage to the surface of the strip since each roll encountered by the strip introduces the possibility of such damage to the surface.